Last week I was comparing machines, and one of the ones I was interested in was the Kenmore 16231, which people here seem to like a lot. I was looking at it at sears.com, and it was available for shipping or with their ship-to-store option. There were several listed at my local Sears stores, and I even went in and looked at one. Over the weekend I looked at it again online, and it had dropped by $30 to $169.

So tonight I went back to look at it again, and my link to it was broken. I tried to search for it, and didn't find it. I drilled down through the categories and couldn't find it either. I opened up a chat with a service rep, and was told that they don't carry it anymore.

Has anybody else been looking for this machine? Have you heard anything like this? I think I'll have to go by Sears tomorrow and see if it's on clearance. :-)

I just checked at Sears Outlet.com they have them there...it is 10:30PM CT Wed...it says from $75.89, I would look there it does not give a quantity of them. There are a few others too if you are interested...from what everyone has said is such a great sm. ...Wish they continue making them. What a shame. ...Let us know if you get one. ...Just a thought I had read on one of the post someone found this sm at K-Mart. Maybe you could also try there. ??? -- Edited on 4/14/10 11:51 PM --

I don't think KMart ever sold the 16231. The did sell the 16221 which retailed at $199 ,and I got it when it went on 75% off so I paid $50 plus tax. I think Sears and KMart discontinued the 16221 about this same time last year. But KMart didn't sell as many different machines as Sears did; KMart only had a small selection of SMs---a couple of basic Singers and one or two very basic Kenmores. Some of the Sears Outlets have the 16231s. And if a brick-n-mortar store had it sitting on the shelf last week, chances are good that it's still there. Overstock also often has the Janome equivalent of the 16231 (which is the Janome 11590, currently $179 on overstock.com). My local Sears has one Kenmore 16231 in stock priced at $125, so if you go inside any/every Sears w/in driving distance, you may be able to find one. Prices on clearance items at Sears stores seem to vary with that particular manager's whims.

I'm back from checking both the Sears stores in my city. The 16231 is $199 at both of them. They did have a couple in boxes on the shelves. The 16221 is $179, up $50 from last week! [CORRECTION: that was the 18221, not the 16221] Sears is being very strange about this, and I don't feel like rewarding them for that. :-)

The thing is, I complained for nearly 8 years when I lived in a place that only had ONE independent sewing store, which only sold Bernina, and nothing under $400. (Well, okay, there was a Singer store there, but I learned to hate it when I took my 301 in for a checkup and then had a hard time ever finding them in the store during their posted business hours or getting them to return my calls; after three weeks of that I started wondering if I was ever going to get it back, or if I was going to see it show up on eBay.) Now I live in a place with TWO independent sewing stores less than a mile from my house. Between them, they carry Janome, Singer, Brother, Bernina, and Baby Lock, and also some reconditioned used machines. Maybe the Kenmore craziness is a sign that it's time to put my money where my mouth is and shop locally. :-) -- Edited on 4/15/10 2:17 PM --

I was just at Sears, they were stocked full of machines. And asked the salesman if they were getting rid of the sewing machines, etc.... he said no but went & asked an old timer & returned & said no way.
Sears had more machines than I've seen in a long time, the salesman said they stock up before Mother's Day.

I am so frustrated! I went to the outlet site and they had #19005 listed; however, you have to designate a particular store to order it, and if that store doesn't have it, you're out of luck! I guess you can't order directly from the outlet store site and pick it up at your local store! I'm going to call their customer service line. The nearest store carrying the machine is Chula Vista, CA, a LONG way from me, and it is priced several hundred dollars more. This is really screwy, and I'm not at all surprised that Sears remains in financial difficulty. Who wants to go thru this kind of stuff all the time?

I just talked to customer service at searsoutlet.com. You're not going to believe this, but one must choose a store location for each and every item you find on the outlet site, and then travel to that location to purchase the item! They will not ship the items. In addition, the price is different at every single location. Of course, not every site will have every item. It's just impossible to do business with them this way.

Searsoutlet.com appears to be a way of identifying closeout items at your local store rather than an actual outlet with a warehouse of goods. The site indicates that they hope to provide shipping in a future release - if that happens it would be great, as long as the shipping cost is not too high.

At my local Sears today, the department manager said he was unaware of any major changes in the sewing department, and none of the items is on a closeout sale. We'll see what happens next!

Several of the Kenmore sewing machines have suddenly disappeared from the Sears.com website. The only remaining ones are the Kenmore Mini Ultra, and the two sewing/embroidery machines. I'm headed for my local Sears this afternoon to see if any of the other machines are still available locally.

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